Michael Walsh Bundle by Michael Walsh Page B

this was the brave new world of warfare.
    Eddie Bartlett himself cut his teeth with the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), 2nd Battalion, at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, better known as the Night Stalkers. Fast in, faster out, wholly lethal, the Night Stalkers were a special helicopter unit, trained to plan and execute the mission and extract everybody in one piece. All of them could fly a chopper between a nun’s legs and she’d never even feel the breeze.
    Ironically, the unit originated with the failure of Operation Eagle Claw in the desert of Iran, after which President Carter had belatedly ordered up an outfit that could actually have accomplished Desert One. So the Army got its best fliers from the Screaming Eagles and elsewhere, put together the 160th SOAR, and had been doing some serious damage ever since.
    One of his three secure, direct-access lines buzzed softly and Bartlett picked it right up. The man on the other end of the line didn’t have to identify himself and spoke, as he always did, without preamble or pleasantries:
    â€œBe ready to bubble down the cell phone service for a ten-mile radius, except for our secure network.” In tech parlance, “bubbling down” meant to shut down cell towers within a given range. “I also want real-time infrared imaging, 3-D coverage.”
    â€œGood idea. The school’s out in the middle of a field, surrounded by nothing. Couple of outbuildings, sheds, whatnots.”
    The voice of “Tom Powers” crackled in his ear. “That’s why they picked it. They think they’ll see us coming. But they won’t. KRV. No heroes, no medals.”
    Bartlett nodded to himself. He had the right crew for the job. “KRV. Roger that.”
    â€œGot your playbook?”
    â€œConsulting it now,” said Eddie. Actually, what he was looking at that precise moment was a computer playing the You Tube video of Miss Teen South Carolina desperately attempting to answer a simple question about Americans and maps, but he knew that “Powers,” who had sent him the link via a series of untraceable cut-out gmail addresses from a server in Abu Dhabi, had embedded the tactical plan inside the video; a self-extracting file, good for one use only, would call it up. And then the hard-drive would melt.
    Bartlett looked up at the countdown clock located on both front bulkheads: just under an hour to touchdown.
    â€œNSDQ,” he said, signing off.
    When Miss Teen South Carolina got to her third repetition of “such as,” he clocked on the dummy link.
    The download was nearly instantaneous. He had just enough time to hit the print button before the hard drive went into its controlled meltdown. The laptop’s titanium case would contain the electrical fire. He read the page as it spat from the high-speed laser printer:
    â€œPatriots, Red 54–40.” Right. Eddie Bartlett turned to his team. “Lock and load, gentlemen. The zone is hot.”

Chapter Sixteen
    I N THE AIR : S KORZENY
    Skorzeny’s Boeing 707 was not immodestly luxurious. This was, after all, a businessman’s plane, not a sheik’s whorehouse or a rock star’s pleasure palace. Tastefully appointed, leather seats, a private sleeping compartment in the back for long trips, it was capable of being refueled while in flight, which meant, as a practical matter, that he could stay airborne for days, even weeks at a time. Rarely were there more than two or three persons aboard, not counting the pilots and the staff.
    Flying time to Paris was less than ninety minutes, so there would be no napping on this trip. Skorzeny sat, as he always did, at his built-in computer console, from which he controlled the worldwide activities of Skorzeny International; since he did business in nearly every time zone on earth, sleep was an unprofitable activity.
    Skorzeny’s plane was equipped with an advanced, satellite-based air-traffic monitoring